In recent years, technology development to expand ink-jet recording in the textile printing field has been improved. For the ink employed in such ink-jet textile printing, various characteristics are required. In a fabric as the recording medium, desired characteristics are, for example, no bleeding, no color mixing of adjacent colors in multi-color printing, good drying properties, and superior durability after image fixing.
In ink-jet textile printing recording, bleeding resistance (reproducibility of thin lines), color bleeding (color mixing of different colors), and rear surface penetration occur due to printed inks onto a fabric, effective pretreatment of the fabric is essential to prevent these problems. The pretreatment process is, for example, usually conducted by application of a pretreatment agent such as a paste, water-soluble salt, or inorganic micro-particles onto the fabric employing a pad method, a coating method, or a spray method. However, such pretreatment process is complex, and a manufacturing process (being a cleaning process) in which such a pretreatment agent is removed is obviously needed after ink-jet printing, and further such a pretreatment process demands major investigational effort as a manufacturing process.
An ink-jet textile printing ink using a dye which is dissolved or dispersed in an aqueous medium is printed onto the fabric, after which the ink is fixed by heat and/or steam as a post-treatment process (being a coloring process), and this post-treatment process is also essential. However, desired is an ink-jet textile printing method which eliminates a post-treatment process.
In a textile printing method employing a pigment ink, the post-treatment process (being a coloring process) is not necessary, differing from the method employing a dye, and has become the desired textile printing method. For example, by blending a polymer into an ink, proposed has been enhancement of bleeding resistance and scratch resistance after heat fixing. (Please refer, for example, to Patent Document 1.) However, it is difficult to prevent bleeding and color bleeding, even though a pigment ink is employed, resulting in difficulty to obtain sufficient image quality without a pretreatment of woven the fabric.
An ink, curable with ultraviolet rays, is known as an ink-jet ink in which bleeding and color bleeding may not occur on a recording medium. (Please refer, for example, to Patent Document 2). As a material curable with ultraviolet rays, acrylate of tri-functional or more functional has been disclosed. Although bleeding and color bleeding are reduced to some degree by faster viscosity increase of the ink with ultraviolet curing, the ink penetrates to the rear surface of the fabric (also known as rear surface penetration) due to a non-water based solvent, resulting for example in a drawback of a density decrease. Further, even in cases when the ink does not exhibit rear surface penetration, emboss occurs on the printed surface of the fabric, because the major portion of the ink is a curable component, resulting in a printed material with a feeling of stiffness.
[Patent Document 1] Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Publication No. (hereinafter, referred to as JP-A) 8-283636
[Patent Document 2] Examined Japanese Patent Application Publication No. (hereinafter, referred to as JP-B) 5-54667